Ridiculous History When Did We All Start Saying "Bulls*t"?
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Apr 28, 2026 A lively dive into the strange history of a single swear word and how it entered everyday speech. They debunk popular origin myths and trace early printed uses. Military slang, literary citations, and the shift from noun to verb all get attention. Broadcast rules and famous academic takes on the term round out the conversation.
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Bullshit Is A Dual Meaning Word
- Bullshit is both a noun and a verb meaning nonsense or idle talk, and can also mean casual small talk or discursive discussion.
- Cambridge and Merriam-Webster show dual senses: insolent/foolish talk and chatting idly, illustrating semantic breadth by early 20th century use.
Bull Refers To Nonsense Not Cattle Poop
- The 'bull' in bullshit likely derives from old senses of bull meaning nonsense, related to French 'bull' (fraud) and Latin roots, not literal cattle feces.
- The popular farmer story about male cow dung being inferior is chronologically and biologically dubious and likely false.
War Soldiers Helped Spread The Term
- World War I and II servicemen helped popularize bullshit as everyday slang, broadening it from literary use into common speech.
- By mid-20th century the term was entrenched in American conversation and later surged in noun/verb frequency by the 1980s.
